tell me
why private thoughts
become so loud and violent
upon our faces that
they peel the layers of skin,
and our own form of sun,
burns us alive inside.
i waited patiently for your breath
like hot summer nights,
a whisper of a wind, a secret
tantalizing, lost in lulls of sleep
and i'm restless in bed,
sheets suffocate me with the
lies of your body, and
ghosts are more familiar
than your scent.
tell me, i screamed it with my
eyes as you slept.
i once held your palm and
felt your fingers slip,
did they reach for hers
instead?

i do not love you
words are not in abundance
i am not drawn to you
like birds migrating to
warmer heavens
i felt something brief,
my breath was caught
by love's noose,
but stranger things happen,
i do not love you,
because to love you
would be to become you,
to capsize like a boat,
submerging into red seas,
i do not love in small measures,
to do so would be worse
than blasphemy,
i feel for you,
but i do not love you,
i do not search for your
face in crowds,
i do not love in honesty,
only lies pounding
hoofs on loves ground.
i cannot love you,
because the taste of it is
strange in my mouth,
an unwanted flavour,
like sand and dust,
in the midst of something
that should be sweet.
i do not love you,
or i cannot love at all.

i raised her
with a violent birth
my vocal cords tangled
like a drunk couple
making love
with her name.

she emerged from
the slit in men's throats,
a grown woman,
her sister followed,
from suffocated coughs,
glowing like streetlamps
from mouth to mouth,
never happy,
never settled.

girls like her,
they don't enter this
world easy,
they leave it in a mess,
exit it like a highway,
move on to the
next place.

there's a stain they
always leave,
yellow on the teeth,
marks on bed-sheets,
empty rings on
bedsides with last
nights drink
gone cold just like
their feelings.

just a girl they say,
harmless,
girls have endless love
in their hearts,
and endless hate.

he only thinks you're
pretty when you cry
when the aching
vulnerabilities sting
like red welts along
cheeks that are
white as teeth
only then are you pretty,
when the red blood
tears fall like soldiers in
the war of peace and
he kisses the place the
bullet exits
he promises he will
still love you as the lion
that murders the lamb
when the sky bleeds,
crimson echoes down
mountains of death
his viper hands
snake round your
hips and you just
don't mind, you just
don't mind anymore

i know you're searching
for a savior
but you're just another
ship captain and i'm
just another lighthouse
flashing you towards
the rocks
attention only makes
me more distant
at night i suffocate dreams
of you with a pillow
until i lie beside the
cadaver of our love
wrap it's cold,
dead hands
around my neck
like a scarf in
this winter hell
last i checked the
weather report
promised no sun
a god told me  
i'll sleep like the dead
when i live
like them too.

they make goodbyes
sound easy
when they're at your door
late at night
and they scream your
name like a warning
from the bottom
of the staircase
you leave them,
until apologies make
your tongue as raw as
saw-dust
those nameless boys
the one's with
smoky breath,
they write your name
to the skies
constellate it to their
forefingers and cross it
over their forehead
like a baptism
those boys with hands
that eat like worms
at the dying heart
of your feelings
no, they don't love you
only death can
love you,
nameless girl
with the
countless faces.

it's nights like this, when we tangle
together like weeds in a seabed of lust
i beg for once, your eyes instead
of your mouth, would confess
how you felt for me.
your lips grow like ivy along the grey
mortar of my spine, your fingers write how
much they don't love me all over my body
and tiny birds take flight from my breath
to be together, is to be apart
when i am with you every word is a mistake,
we press our lips together
harder than we want to press
them against each others mouths
i keep tripping over apologies
and you just want someone who
is steady on their feet
i once knew a boy who told me
he wasn't an artist, but painted
the shores on my cheeks
when he spoke, even the trees leaned
in to hear his beautiful lies